Month: August 2016

The Residence Inn, in colorful South Reno, seemed like the perfect staging post for the long-awaited reunion of the three amigos. The low-key comfort of generic beige and mauve-hued décor in a functional two-bedroom suite offered the opportunity for a casual catch up on what’s been happening in our lives over the past decade. There are times for me when the Residence Inn is simply ideal for a stopover or a longer break: the breakfast is simply no nonsense but allows you to make your own pancakes if you are feeling adventurous or the desire to be more directly involved in your own breakfast.

We had come in from an eclectic mishmash of points east: Nashville Tennessee, Washington DC, and Durango, Colorado, to meet up and head out to the highly-touted Burning Man Festival in the searing Nevada desert, a couple hundred miles to the north east. To endure the arid affair for a week, Chris left his new home by the Animas River in the craggy mountainous area south west of Denver while Jay traveled from his magnificent contemporary home on Tennessee’s winding Cumberland River. Leaving my home in a leafy Greater Washington DC suburb, I pondered the lure of natural waterways and why many of my friends and family felt the need to have them in their backyard. Certainly I love to swim as often as possible—it feels good and is easy exercise, but I don’t think my friends go for a dip in their adjacent aqua, though I’ll have to ask them. They certainly have boats and other leisurely means of aquatic conveyance, which looks like a lot of fun. I guess I never really got into sailing: I did take a few lessons on Hogganfield Loch in Glasgow, Scotland when I was a teenager, but all I remember is my wet clingy anorak, numb cold hands and a yearning for a hot sausage roll from the café afterwards—and then there was that George Clooney movie.

Anyways, It will be good to catch up with the River Monsters over the next week as we head into the hot ‘n hazy desert for the barren blowout with our dazzlingly decorated bicycles and coordinated festival fashion, though I have no idea why I’m doing this, other than as a celebratory scenic backdrop to my ongoing quarter-century friendship with these guys.